What if the Vikings kicker had shanked a 29-yard field goal as time expired on Dec. 30, 2012, in a 37-34 victory over the Packers that knocked the Bears out of the NFC playoffs?

What if the Bears, 10-6 that season after a Week 17 win against the Lions, had advanced into the postseason as the NFC wild-card team instead of the Vikings?

Would Lovie Smith still be coaching the Bears instead of the Buccaneers on Sunday at Raymond James Stadium?

Would the Bears be better off if Smith had stayed?

These questions are impossible to ignore seeing the Bears play the man who coached them from 2004 to 2012 — as well as Buccaneers defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, the Vikings coach the day they sealed Smith's fate.

It was playoffs-or-bust that season for Smith, in his first year working awkwardly under former general manager Phil Emery. The Bears looked as if they had removed doubt with an 8-3 start, but a 2-3 December meant they missed the playoffs for the fifth time in six years, an unacceptable trend for the NFL's charter franchise. So Emery fired Smith, whose longevity created a sense of Lovie fatigue around the city. Smith's popularity waned everywhere but in the Bears locker room, where players believed he deserved to return much more than fans or media did — present company included.

Nearly three years later, the latter seasons of the Lovie Smith Era in Chicago look like the halcyon days.

Smith went 29-19 from 2010-12, a stretch of .604 football when the Bears played in an NFC championship game. They have gone 18-27-1 (.400) since Smith left town, an occasionally embarrassing period that has lowered the bar considerably. This season started with a loss to the Packers that encouraged people because the Bears simply were competitive. Winning three out of four games in November created an epidemic of overreaction. Three straight losses restored reality to coach John Fox's first season.

The Bears simply aren't very good. They don't do any one thing particularly well and lack an identity on either side of the ball. They don't specialize in anything really. They have no Pro Bowl players, and nobody outside of cornerback Tracy Porter and his family found that hard to believe. They are one of the NFL's most nondescript teams.

The praise heaped on Fox comes mostly because he benefits by comparison to predecessor Marc Trestman, the cerebral interloper more suited as a life coach than an NFL head coach. Trestman inherited Smith's 10-6 team, mistakenly called for a field-goal attempt on second down against the Vikings, and that loss as much as any one play kept the Bears from the playoffs in 2013. It also publicly introduced the first piece of evidence that Emery had hired the wrong man, inexplicably choosing Trestman over NFL coach of the year Bruce Arians, an error that cost both Emery and Trestman their jobs by the time the 2014 circus of a season had ended. Enter Fox, a more gregarious version of Smith.

Truth is, Fox re-established credibility at Halas Hall by doing the job much the way Smith did for nine seasons: treating players like men and employing a philosophy built on a strong defense and conservative offense. Fox arrives Sunday in western Florida with a .559 regular-season winning percentage (124-98) compared with .511 (89-85) for Smith, who trails Fox in Super Bowl appearances 2-1. If Smith could hire offensive coordinators as well as Fox has, perhaps he could have returned to a Super Bowl with the Bears. Alas, whereas Fox finally found Adam Gase, Smith put his faith in Mike Tice, who succeeded Mike Martz, whose bromance with Jay Cutler lasted barely beyond dessert.

Like Smith, Fox also holds a disdain for the Bears media corps, condescension the Bears probably find comforting because it underscores his experience as an NFL head coach. He clearly knows what he's doing. Fox's consistency in approach — something that always helped Smith connect with players — gives the Bears hope for the future no matter what their 2015 record is.

Meanwhile, history gets a little kinder to Smith every week.

The Bears were 32-22 against the NFC North during Smith's tenure, which began with his vow to beat the Packers. They are 4-13 in the division since his firing. Only three NFL teams in 2015 have fewer takeaways than the Bears' 14. Under Smith, no NFL team created more takeaways from 2004-12 than the Bears with 310. Smith left behind a defense that was ranked fifth overall. Since 2013, the Bears defense under two coordinators has been so charitable their scheme would be best described as the 501(c)(3).

It typically takes three years to fairly evaluate an NFL draft, and that seems an adequate amount of time to judge a coaching change too. Change is good. Change for the Bears felt necessary at the end of the 2012 season. But changing coaches didn't work because one right decision was followed by several wrong ones.

So a sense of regret isn't necessarily what Bears fans should feel seeing Smith coach the Bucs against the team he represented proudly for nine seasons. A deeper respect is.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 27, 2015, in the Sports section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "History kind to Smith's stint - Firing not wrong, but respect should grow in hindsight" —
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